No, Not Everyone Can Travel – A Bubble Burster

I have read lots of posts about how everyone can travel, how each one of us can save up and travel, and that it’s not impossible to live the travel dream.

Actually I sometimes feel there’s a rivalry going on between the travel bloggers about who’s traveling on a tighter budget than the other one.

On each travel blog there’s an 80% chance you’ll find at least one post – if not more – talking about how much that blogger spends per day, per month, and how much they started traveling with in the first place, which of course wasn’t much, but they somehow were able to keep going.

Let’s get back to this last sentence: “…Which of course wasn’t much…” I should have added … “according to American standards”.

How many of you make less than US$ 7 per hour?

That’s right, none.

And that is why, money wise, I don’t get how some of you still complain about money and budgeting! You can afford it all, yes you do.

Well, at least I know if I worked for US$ 7 per hour, I know I’d be making a fortune in no time – and before you disagree, one friend of mine worked for 3 months in the States at US$ 7 per hour, he came home with US$ 7,000, approximately EGP 42,000, an amount that I would do working 2 years straight and spending literally nothing.

He’s not the only example, I know many people who work during summer vacations in the States and UK, and the least they do is cover their flying costs, approximately US$ 1,000.

Then how much do I make?

I’m a pharmacist, a graduate of pharmacy school, and I’m working for my father which gives me the privilege of getting paid even more than if I worked in any other pharmacy; I make less than US$ 2 per hour. I work for 12 hours per day, to make US$ 500 per month.

PS I’m middle class Egyptian, and I’m considered one of the very lucky Egyptians as well.

Now consider someone who isn’t working in the fancy industry of pharmacy, someone let’s say, working in a supermarket, or in a restaurant, I can tell you they make a maximum of half what I make per month, working the same hours as me or slightly more.

Most of the posts I’ve read about how anyone can travel claim that on long term traveling you tend to spend less than you spend at home. The lowest number I’ve read so far wasUS$ 23/day.

OnlyUS$ 23/day? In Egypt, 60% of the population lives on less than $2 per day! $23/day per person that adds up to $25,000 per year, which is a fortune for a high class Egyptian family!

My question here is, when the travel blogosphere mentions that anyone can travel, do they mean only North Americans and Western Europeans? Well I’m sorry but that is not exactly ‘anyone’, that is hardly 15%* of the world’s population.

Now that I am done with the main issue, I should also mention that, even if given enough to travel, you are not guaranteed to go anywhere outside your borders.

EU, USA, Australian and Canadian citizens are granted visas upon arrival to almost everywhere in the world, except for some few destinations, like Russia, China… which makes the ‘travel challenge’ thing. You buy plane tickets and go, and buy your entry at the airport, with the added fun of collecting stamps on your passport pages.

To the rest of the world, however, you need a visa to travel to almost anywhere on planet earth. And no, you don’t just send your passport to the embassy, they stamp the visa and send it back over to you. It’s far more complicated than this. You actually have to apply for an interview first, visit the embassy in person, fill in a 3+ page application, and make the interview; which is basically composed of a couple of main questions:

– Where do you work?

– How much money is in your bank account?

– Where will you stay in your destination?

– How long do you plan on staying?

All these questions have only one main point behind them, “How do I know you will actually come back to Egypt?!”

I applied to the American embassy some 5 years ago to go visit my uncle, who is an American citizen. I said I would stay there for one month, me and my sister, at his house, we showed them our bank accounts, our parents’ bank accounts, papers proving we own two pharmacies, a flat and 3 cars, and papers showing we were both still in university with a couple of years to go. To me, that was enough reasons to come back to Egypt, I wouldn’t simply throw away all of this to go start from scratch in the States, illegally.

Did I mention I had an official invitation from my uncle? And both my parents’ passports which has USA visas already in them?

Yet we were rejected, and for no apparent reason. “Reasons are confidential; you are perfect candidates for the American Visa but not at this moment.”

We were, however, able to get a Schengen visa that same summer with the same exact papers from the Spanish embassy. It pretty much depends on the interviewer’s view of you.

I have to agree that a Schengen visa is much easier than a USA visa, all Egyptians will agree on that, especially the ones that tried for both.

But can I backpack around Europe?

Again, given the assumption that an Egyptian has enough money to travel around Europe for two or three months, can they actually do it?

A short answer is No.

One of the main papers you have to have with you for your visa interview is a booked flight to and from your destination, and the other very important document is hotel reservations for your whole stay!

That summer we applied for a Spanish visa, we planned 4 days stay in Madrid and 2 in Palma de Mallorca, and we had hotel reservations for both places, flights to and from Madrid and the internal flight as well. We were granted a visa for the exact 6 days included in our reservations, no room for error!

So it is actually doable, I can travel around Europe, but I’ll have to pre-plan exactly on which dates I’ll be in which cities, and have reservations for those cities, and have pre-booked transportation as well.

And as you travelers know, those pre-booked vacations are almost always more expensive, and would eliminate all the chances of finding the cheap deals and cheap transportation.

Where did all the fun of unplanned travel and leave a city or stay more in it depending on how much I like it go? Well, you’re Egyptian; you’re not allowed to have that kind of fancy fun!

********************************************************************

*This figure is calculated according to 2010/2011 figures, with the use of an average number between the population of Western Europe and Europe to compensate for the poorer countries in Europe.

Author’s note: Having said all this, I have nothing against you, travelers, on the contrary, reading your blogs everyday is what keeps me alive, and gives me a goal and hope that I will see all those places someday.

About the author

An Egyptian guy in the early 20s that has a dream of traveling the world, instead of becoming a boring pharmacist. I’m always writing travel tales from a different (Egyptian) point of view, and general travel advice and travel mishaps!

237 Responses to No, Not Everyone Can Travel – A Bubble Burster

It’s so true that we American & European bloggers often forget our privilege when we go on & on about how “everyone” can travel. We are extremely lucky simply by our country of birth – I know having an American passport is a huge advantage, not to mention the high wages we earn. We need more bloggers from diverse backgrounds to make this conversation whole. Thanks for you very enlightening post!

Thank you so much for sharing your experiences. It’s vitally important to dig below the generalizations and begin to truly understand what the world is like for others… Really appreciate your story. It’s humbling to hear.

Mina, thank you so much for writing this. You’ve opened up my eyes and countless others. It’s one thing to know in the back of your head that most people can’t travel as easily as Europeans and North Americans; it’s another entirely to see it written starkly by a talented travel blogger.

I wish it were easier for you.

Thank you for sharing this — I’ll be thinking about it for a long time.

Thanks for sharing this post, Mina. I’ve always felt that too many American/European travel bloggers (and, if we’re being honest, travelers) have a sense of entitlement, as if it’s a god-given right to travel the world and anyone can do it. My partner Mary and I could never afford to travel as much as we do if I didn’t have my career as a freelance writer, and long-term travel isn’t an option for us because I have a 10-year-old daughter who’s only with me 1/2 the time. I wish more bloggers had a deeper sense of appreciation for their incredible fortune, and talked less about how hard they worked to get where they are and more about how they intend to make the world a better place by using the incredible platform they’ve been given.

Well done. This is an excellent post. I love your directness and your honesty and the courage it took to put this out there.

p.s. I remember standing in the American Embassy in Dublin waiting for my visa interview + being terrified – and I’m one of the lucky ones. All I can say is that we try to impress on our kids that they (i) won the location/sperm lottery + (ii) because of that they have a responsibility to learn about + do something about global (social, political, economic, environmental) problems.

You are absolutely right. I’ve often said that most of the reason I’ve been able to do what I’ve done is because I hold a US passport. When we lived and taught in Alexandria, Egypt for a couple years, I met many people – just like you – who didn’t have the luxury of travel like I did. We then moved to Ethiopia and saw the exact same thing.

My brother married a woman from Mozambique and he had a very, very difficult time getting permission for her to visit my parents in the USA. Many of us forget about all that.

My sister once explained the money thing to me this way: Let’s just assume that we can save 10% of our salary. If I make $100,000 per year and save 10%, I save $10,000. If I only made $25,000 I save $2,500. And for Egyptians (and Ethiopians and Hondurans and…) the idea of making $25K a year is an outrageous thought.

I kind of know how you feel; my whole family comes from Colombia & Venezuela and the obstacles they go through anytime they want to travel borders on harassment sometimes. I got lucky because I was born in the UK before they changed the law that granted you citizenship just by being born there; but I’m very aware of how important that little piece of paper is in my life. I treasure it more than anything I have because it gives me freedom to move around.

You should definitely treasure that piece of paper more than many other things! I know many people that had the luck of being born in the States and so automatically they got a USA citizenship. Some parents even used that as a way of passing on the citizenships to themselves…quite complicated

Thank you so much for writing this. I think that it can be really easy to forget how privileged a lot of western travelers are. I know I personally never stop feeling lucky for all the advantages I’ve had, and I think it’s important for all travelers to keep in mind.

I think the other issue is that you are also coming into a market that is completely saturated with Western bloggers (myself included) who naturally write about the cost of living difference because it’s a major motivator when you come from a country that costs $75 a day or more to eke out an existence and you are going to a country where it only costs $15-$20 a day.

I’m the first to admit I talk about it on a regular basis with my newsletter subscribers, on the Facebook page, and it’s one of the major selling points I use to leverage my books…but then again, I’m not marketing to the people of the world who only live on $2 or $3 or $5 a day. I’m primary writing for an audience of others like myself.

My girlfriend here in Mexico lives on about $3 per day. Her salary for a month of 50 hour work weeks is about what I make in a day; maybe two if things are slow. And if I were to write a product for her demographic it would certainly need to be about a different perspective than the “look at all the money you can save”. But the reality is, for those of us come from a Western background in the United States, one of the major reasons we love to travel is the money we save…in comparison to what our home country costs.

The other thing is…I was barely breaking even in the United States…now I’m debt-free and retired, and I accomplished all of that while traveling in other countries. From my perspective that’s a super powerful story, and it’s something I want to share with anyone who wants to now about it and wants to explore the same pathways…and I’m writing for that audience. I’m writing for the people who want to know how to do it, who are inspired by stories of escaping the wage slavery of America, and it’s natural that those points of view seem strange or different to someone who didn’t grow up in the United States.

I’m an immersion traveler. I love the cultures and the languages and the people and the friendships I make more than anything else. But I also enjoy the benefit of being able to go to countries where the cost of living is less than my home country. And therein lies the rub. I’m writing from an American background and you are writing from an Egyptian background; I think it is only natural that the two have completely striking points of view on things.

In any case, I agree with some of your points; it’s more difficult to travel if you come from certain countries, and that’s just the reality of the world. But it’s certainly not impossible. You don’t have to travel to countries where you need a visa, for example, so you can get around income requirements, and if you are traveling by bus instead of airplanes you can easily travel on as little as $3 to $5 per day as long as you eat simply; I know, because I’ve done it. It’s not glamorous, but it’s do-able. And while it would certainly be harder for a Mexican, for example, making $3 a day…it’s not impossible.

Good post. It will be interesting to see a different point of view, because you are right 🙂 The market is saturated with American POV blogs. I love reading about other people’s success stories in other countries. It sounds to me like you have some good ideas and are on the right track so keep up what you are doing 🙂 And if you ever decide to come to head to Latin America I’m sure I’ll be down here somewhere, working on another project.

Also, one other thing I was thinking about while walking that I wanted to point out:

There are ways around providing minimum proof of income for those who don’t have a lot to spread around, such as using secondary bank accounts to do 2-3k worth of transfers per month on a continual basis. PayPal also helps. I’ve used both methods. Governments do not need to see your actual salary. You can set up bank accounts whose only purpose is to use for immigration purposes, and keep your actual salary apart. This is especially helpful if you hit a rough patch in your career and maybe need somewhere super cheap to lay low for awhile; you can use a pre-funded bank account that you set up specifically for transfers. This is just one of many different ways you can get around proof of income even if you don’t make that much.

Traveler’s insurance isn’t required by all countries, although it is by some. If one were limited by this factor, they could just skip countries that didn’t require it until their business was making enough money to cover the extra expense. And not all countries really check; in 6 years of traveling to and 2.5 years of living in Bulgaria, not once did anyone ever ask me to provide proof of health insurance/traveler’s insurance, even though their embassy website states it is a requirement. It just depends on the country.

People also do NOT have to buy a round-trip ticket. This is a myth. There are half a dozen ways I can name off the top of my head to get around proof of exit from a country, not the least of which is a cheap, disposable ticket from a bus station or boat, purchased online before you leave. This avoids needing a round-trip ticket that could cost you an extra few hundred or thousand. All immigration/customs cares about is if you have some form of exit from a country; it doesn’t have to be a plane ticket. It can be any form of exit.

It’s also myth that only Americans can earn a good wage on a global basis. I have plenty of foreign friends who are in the 25-50+ dollar an hour bracket and they got there by hard work and perseverance. Americans are not blessed with a “great wage” simply by birth. Most Americans are, in fact, living in abject poverty, on borrowed money. The dollar is only worth more when you start spending those dollars OUTSIDE of the United States.

I’ve been traveling a long time and I’ve NEVER been asked to provide proof of where I’m staying in-country unless I’m going for a visa. On my passport stays I always just list some random hotel and that’s all they want to know. Granted, maybe it’s different for Egyptians, but I’ve never been asked to provide hotel reservations for my whole stay.

Well if I want to go to countries with no visa requirments as an Egyptian that would be a very few countries in south east asia (living cost there is almost equal to that of living in Egypt or a little bit more from what I read on other blogs…)

Also most East African countries do not require a Visa for an Egyptian, but those are really expensive to travel through…
Because of the “Visa on Arrival” in those African countries I spend days planning an overland trip from Cape town back to my home in Alexandria…but after detailed planning I figured it would cost almost 8000 USD, which isn’t affordable for me at the moment..
Ofcourse it could be do-able on alot less, maybe around 5000 only but then I would be missing out on most or even all the cool stuff to be done in those countries, and then there is no point of going…

South America is also on mu bucket list 😀 I’ll let you know when I’m coming and maybe you will have some advice for me 🙂

You write with such passion, Mina. As others have said, your story helps to put things into perspective and make us realize how lucky we are.
I am proudly Canadian and have been lucky to travel not only a lot in my own country, but in many places in the world–not as much as some of the Global Bloggers, but a lot. There are many places I’d love to go, or go back to, including Egypt, which I have not had the chance to visit–yet.
Our youngest son has been living and teaching in S.Korea for almost three years and has traveled in that part of the world, and he thinks that he had an easier time sometimes because of that Canadian passport. It was still tricky to get visas to go to China, and now he wants to go to Taiwan to live and teach there. That may involve some work, but he will still likely get the visa. It’s not always easy to travel, and it’s through sharing our stories that we find out that what is easy and doable for some is not for others. Thank you so much for sharing your story.

This is a great piece and really puts the whole travel experience in perspective.

While it’s true that Americans don’t have visa worries for most countries, I do think that the majority of us (myself included) take short trips where the flights and hotels are booked in advance, very similar to what you did for Spain. But of course, we’re lucky to have the option to go for longer and with more flexibility.

Yeah the point is that you chose to do this, maybe because it’s cheaper. It’s a totally different thing when you’re forced to do it even of you know you will find cheaper deals some other way 🙂 and of course you know that some of the fun about it is the flexibility and the option to stay longer or less as you wish…

Thank you for sharing. You’re right – it’s very easy to forget just how easy it is. I have dual citizenship with Canada and the UK, so I have it even easier (for instance, the UAE have visa restrictions on Canada, but not on the UK). I never even considered that other nationalities have to have exact plans, flights, hotels, etc all pre-booked before visiting other countries. I had to do that for Russia, but that’s the only country thus far for me.

This post is a very humbling reminder that the world isn’t as open for everyone as it is for us. Thank you again for providing a realistic and more globally-oriented perspective on the “ease” of travel. I do hope you get to enjoy more experiences abroad soon. 🙂

Although its not at the same level as you’ve experienced, I remember when the NZ$ was so low that you couldn’t effectively save money at home to travel Europe or the US, particularly as the airfares were very,very high.

The only way to do it was to work in the UK to save pounds. At least we had the option, something closed to Egyptian travellers.

Now the exchange rate has gone the other way – and I smile when Americans talk about how expensive NZ is! Hopefully one day it will change for Egyptians as well.

Not only was I born in the USA, but I was born into an educated, upper middle class family. It’s easy to slip into thinking that I’ve “created” my current lifestyle through the right choices and hard work, but you’ve definitely reminded me that my lifestyle is more a result of pure luck and location than anything else. Excellent post, very glad I read this.

What an eye-opener. I’m ashamed to have never thought about how easy it is to travel with the “right-colored passport”, even though I have friends and family with Chinese passports who often find it difficult to travel on a whim like I do, and have been denied visas despite showing overwhelming proof of ties to home. Thanks for sharing your perspective.

I am starting to learn about just how hard it is for others to get into western states. I’m from the USA and didn’t even realize how much pains in the a** we are to outsiders until i came to South America.

I fell in love down here in Colombia, and now to get him to the states to meet my family (even if i go back first and fund the trip; because like you said, its really expensive to travel for non-USA/EURO people)…its still almost an impossible task getting a Colombian into America. (we have some friendly trade thing going with Colombia, we just don’t actually want Colombians in our country)

Oh, and to book a roundtrip flight between Miami and Colombia is cheaper to do Miami-Colombia-Miami than Colombia-Miami-Colombia; cheaper by about $100-300USD. So not only do Colombians make less money, it is more expensive for them to fly.

I feel really bad for people ‘outside of the western world’ (im using this statement mockingly; please dont take offense) and i feel really bad. i think everyone should be able to travel; not just the wicked rich or lucky.

Someone before told me that in some countries though US citizens get a fairly easy entrance they have to pay almost double the price that other nationalities pay…specially in African countires, and they said that they believe was this how the countries are getting their pay back for the hard time they get to visit the states 🙂

I too think everyone should be able to travel…I wish you and boyfriend good luck and easier time in visiting you in the states 🙂

Very interesting post. Just included it on our link roundup that i’ll be publishing later. I’m always told back at home how lucky I am to be living the life that I live and to some degree I am. I sometimes fight back saying it’s not all luck and that it was a lot of hard work and dedication to get to where I am today but the reality is part of it is in fact luck just based on where I was born. Most of the people that tell me I’m lucky back at home though are buying fancy cars so when I write “anyone can travel”, I usually target them.

Well it is not everyone’s dream to travel all around the world. Some have the extremely materialistic dreams of the extremely high class and fancy lives, so they want their fancy cars, their fancy houses, and for a 1 week vacation they would like a first class flight to Paris where they would stay in a 5 stars hotel…etc

And then they would say they can’t afford that, or when they see you traveling all the time and they compare it to their 1 week per year traveling costs they go crazy thinking you must be a secret multi-millionaire 😀 Those deserve the every American with a job can travel posts 😀

This is a great world perspective on traveling. Too often, we think of travel in terms of a western market or lifestyle. So traveling on $50 a day is impossible to people in other countries. Many people may even resent travelers for quitting jobs to travel on that amount of money.

While I definitely appreciate your perspective (and you make some great points), I want to share with you my travel philosophy that has come about as a result of my own experiences.

I run a budget travel blog but I don’t talk about money a lot or how to do things on so many dollars a day. My focus is on the experiences I have. My motto is not about traveling on as little money as possible but getting the most travel experience with the money you have to spend.

In your case, that’s going to be difficult. I used to think that I had to travel halfway around the world to experience new places. I was wrong.

I’ve spent a lot of time traveling in my own backyard right where I live. This past weekend, I attended a Scottish festival where I learned about Scottish culture, dancing, history, and clans. I didn’t need a plane ticket but I did travel to another world and learned so much about other people and a place I have yet to visit.

I don’t know what travel in Egypt is like and I can’t speak to the conditions, income level, or opportunities so I don’t mean to assume anything. I’ve just learned that travel isn’t about a destination but a mindset and an attitude. You can visit the next town or a new place right in your own town and have an awesome travel experience meeting people from different places, backgrounds, cultures, and countries.

I wish you the best in your travel opportunities and hope you experience the world wherever you are.

You are definitely right about the traveling in backyard thing…
While I have been to the main high lights in Egypt (Alexandria, Cairo, most of Sinai, Siwa…etc) I still have never been to some places which are also very important visits and I know I’ll enjoy them a lot!

That is when the “I’m considered one of the lucky Egyptians” comes in, for me, as a middle class Egyptian, traveling around Egypt won’t be so hard. Not THAT cheap either but affordable as long as I don’t go crazy with luxury stuff 😀 Which is something I, of course, plan on doing. But I fall in the paradox of should I spend half my monthly salary on a 1 week trip somewhere inside Egypt? or should I keep saving up so I can go abroad sometime sooner?!

But again I’d have to mention that local traveling isn’t affordable to most of the other Egyptians…the most that the majority of people do is take 1 day trips to Alexandria, where they spend a complete 24 hours on the beach, bringing their food and everything with them from their home towns, coming in big buses so transportation cost would be smaller, and that’s it! and to many, this trip is a luxury!

Thanks again for your comment and I will give more thought to local traveling

PS its a HE not a SHE (I saw your post on the global bloggers network on facebook 😀 Mina is a very popular Coptic name for guys in Egypt)

Excellent post 🙂 I’m an Indian and a travel dreamer myself, and I often envy the North American travel bloggers who have all the privilege you stated! Unplanned travel is what contributes to fun. But sadly, most of the times, we can’t do that. Still, this hustle to get the visa is challenging and makes the trip interesting. But on the bright side, there are lots of remote places and islands which we could explore without the intervention of visas.
BTW, Your country is so beautiful, and am planning to visit Egypt, next year. One of my dream destination 🙂

Thanks Karthick. Makes me feel better when I know I’m not alone. Sure the visa part is fun when it’s just a good memory of how you GOT the visa of a certain country, other wise it won’t be that much fun 😀

[…] other destinations. Very useful tips especially for me as I have plans for Italy next year.No, Not Everyone Can Travel on Someday I’ll Be There: We have several articles here on Art of Backpacking about how […]

Thank you so much for writing this, Mina. I hope your words raise much awareness. I would like to add, too, that there are people in the US and Canada who can’t travel, either. They are the people who are often invisible in our society, the ones no one wants to acknowledge because they belie the “American dream” that everyone in the US is well-off. They may be American citizens, but they can’t even afford homes, or medicine that they need, or food for their children. Try telling them they can travel “if they want to” or if they “save their money”–what money? Travel isn’t even a pipe dream for them. All they want is a dry roof over their head and food in their bellies. Those of us who can travel ARE privileged and we need to acknowledge that. Thanks for getting the conversation started.

Gray, that’s another Huge thing. That even some westerners can’t afford traveling and not because they are buying fancy things they don’t really need, but because they seriously can’t afford it. I think even I could be considered privileged when compared to those group of people whether westerns or non, given that I atleast got the chance to travel abroad a couple of times and is given the option to travel in my own country…

this was a refereshing and interesting read. thanks so much for sharing! although i feel fortunate enough to come from canada, i am still young and have not saved enough money to have 23$ a day to live off of (unless i travel for only like, 3 days haha) without somehow making more money as i go. i am currently travelling around asia (based out of japan where I have a job as an english teacher) and i feel this is as nomadic as I will get for a while. not that i am complaining! just going about travelling in my own way..
again, great post!

Actually I don’t really believe that 23/day is THAT enough, if you add in the solid costs of flights for example then it is definitely more than just 23/day. I can accept that number for only food and very cheap accommodation.

I’m not trying to pull you down but it is just how I feel about that number 🙂 I’m wishing you better luck on your nomadic life and hopefully it’ll get a lot better along the way 🙂

Thank you for writing this post!!! It drives me CRAZY to read people saying, “Oh, there’s nothing so special about me…” Um, well, there may be nothing special about you, but those of us born in the west are ridiculously lucky. We have met many, many people denied American visas – including several who just wanted to fly through Miami from Asia – they weren’t even visiting the States! We look forward to reading the update to this post one day – the one where you get to live out your travel dreams!

This is a great post! I admit that when I say anyone can travel I am usually referring to Americans. That is where my readership is and is the target of who I am trying to get motivated to get up and try something new.

I think there are several disclaimers to the “anyone can travel” ideology, 2 of which you mentioned. Also, it is geared towards someone who actually wants to (but thinks they can’t for silly reasons). If you do not have the passion to see and learn from the rest of the world then you certainly can NOT travel.

It has been very humbling as an American to travel the world and see the advantages that we have simply by being born in a certain country, travel isn’t the only one but it certainly stands out!

Great points, I will be sharing this and hopefully enlightening others with you views and observations.

The posts must always be geared towards those who actually want and have a passion for traveling. Even this post I’ve written means nothing if I had in mind Egyptians who have no passion for traveling or are just not interested in seeing something new…

Good on you to write this Mina. Well written, and I remember we commented on each other’s blogs a while back. Don’t give up on anything you want to do. No matter how hard it may seem.
I can only imagine how hard it must be for you, we take so many things for granted. I always give thanks for everything that I am able to do and I do hope that one day things get easier for you.
Seriously great post and thank you for writing this!

We too have met many people during our travels who have humbled us with their situations similar to yours. It’s not just a matter of having the means, but like you said, it’s just the nationality that you were born into coupled with politics that results in ‘not everyone can travel’. And when you come from western societies, you do tend to take your privileges and freedoms for granted 🙁 Thanks for bringing a ‘voice’ to this very real situation.

Thanks for this. It’s always good to see travel from all different perspectives. Makes me even more grateful to be from the US. I wish my friends had the desire to travel, but they seem to be bogged down by unnecessary expenses that they use as excuses to not having enough money.

Thank you so much for sharing your story! Truly an eye-opener. I’m ashamed I sometimes overlook my USA passport and citizenship I forget it’s not the same process for everyone. I’m sorry it’s a different system for you but hope you’ll get a chance to get out and explore someday soon and with ease. All the best. 🙂

Wow Mina thank you for this post! This is something I have only started to think about the last few months too. I am Irish and never before realized how lucky I am. We are really spoilt on the traveling front and our wages are one of the highest in Europe too (despite a recession). There is a huge travel culture in Ireland right now, its almost become a right of passage for young people in their twenties to do round the world trips, a few months in Thailand or backpack through South America, yet I can say that few appreciate really what they are doing.

It wasn’t until I met my Colombian boyfriend (seems like there’s a Colombian boyfriend trend here? haha) that I realized how hard it is for him to travel. Although he has travelled a lot more (with his previous job) than many Colombians, he gets looked at suspiciously and questioned, every time he goes through passport control at the airport, for having so many stamps on his passport. To make it worse, we are currently traveling through South America and I can enter more countries than he can in his own continent. Compare these two maps for example to compare the freedom of travel for me and him: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_Irish_citizenshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_Colombian_citizens

We plan to travel to Ireland, the UK and mainland Europe next year but it will not be as simple as flying from wherever we may be at that time. We will have to return to Colombia for at least a month in order for him to sort out his visas. Not to mention he will need 3 separate visas; one for Ireland, one for the UK and the Schengen visa. And still the maximum stay is 3 months….not exactly enough time to explore the many countries of mainland Europe!

I hope more people begin to appreciate how lucky you are to be born in the US, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand etc and to complain less about not having money (how much ‘stuff’ do you really need anyway?). I am now extremely thankful every day for what I can do.

Prejudice based on the country you were born in is one of the most unfair things in this world. Its the 1% of people that do bad things in these countries that make it hard for the 99% of good people to travel.

First of all, yes there must be kind of a trend going on in here 😀 Making Egyptian men jealous 😛

I would say I have the situation here in Africa, I’m only allowed to a few East African countries with visa on arrival (not even visa free) while mane US citizens and Europeans..etc are allowed into way more countries, some of them visa free and some visa on arrival.
I only have the privilege above westerners in visiting Sudan visa free while westerners have to apply for a Sudanese visa! (Take THAT west world! haha)

But yeah, I know if I think of it politically and with all the prople that travel illegally I’ll see the point of the prejudice based on country, but it is really unfair for people who just want to travel and see the world.

As someone from the Philippines, I can totally relate to your post here. It’s so difficult to travel to developed countries; they seem to think we’d all illegally stay there! That said, I’ve just been to Europe for 70 days, and I didn’t spend so much. The secret? Couchsurfing, free tours, packs of soup, cheap flights via RyanAir etc. I wrote a post How to Travel Cheaply in Europe in my blog based on my experience 🙂 And yeah, in the Philippines, minimum wage is less than $2 a day too!

I myself got the chance to walk the Camino de Santiago in Spain last summer on a 6 weeks visa! (My interviewer was a very nice lady!) But I kind of had a hard time keeping my daily spending to an average of 25 euros per day… And I’ve been broke since that trip 😛 now saving up again though 😛 I’ll try to be on a tighter budget next time I travel 🙂

Great post. I have friends all over the world, so many times I have asked if they want to go along on one of my travels and been told they just can’t afford it based on their income or the visa process.

Some have never been outside their own borders.

Thanks for bringing this to light among all the misinformation from bloggers who think only of themselves when writing their tips on how to travel RTW with their “Top Ten” tips. 🙂

According to how I divide people, I would say that your friends are also of the lucky in their countries, being able to be friends with foreigners and speak English (I assume they are not from English speaking countries)…There are the less privileged who can’t even travel locally inside their home country because simple taking a day off would mean there is no food for that day…

Very well said. I live in the Philippines and we have the same problems. Financially, most of the middle class folks here can only afford to go to nearby countries and only for a few days. The less fortunate don’t even have that “luxury”. Meanwhile, even ordinary Western folks get to live like kings here. I surely would love to travel the world if I had the money. 🙂

[…] Very important thing to read and keep in mind. It’s too easy to get sucked into travel blogs and daydreaming and not realize just how lucky you are to even have the option. No, Not Everyone Can Travel – A Bubble Burster […]

Mina,
Thank you so much for writing this. You are quite right in what you have said. In Vietnam, a woman I was speaking to told me just how difficult it is to get visas to come to the States. That conversation has stuck with me ever since.
Now, after reading this, I am reminded of it again. Travel isn’t always easy, and sometimes, when you live in a country that allows for relatively easy travel, you forget what it’s like for people elsewhere. Thank you for opening my eyes. I will be sure to share this. 🙂
Erin

What an irony that a citizen of a country with such a heritage of welcoming and wowing visitors from all over the world should find it so prohibitively expensive and bureaucratically difficult to leave their own shores and see the world.

I’m Irish and have been privileged to see your country a number of times. I wish for you that one day, if you’re so inclined, you might see mine.

Getting out there has fired the imagination for millenia, but it has to be said that much of what we see and read about these days in magazines and in the blogosphere is a very poor cousin indeed of the adventurous spirit of, say, an Ibn Battuta or any other great traveller of the past.

Often nowadays it is reduced to a commodity – the plaything of the rich on a gap year. A series of empty experiences to be ticked off. Jumping off this or skiing down that. Eating this, buying that. Everything with a price tag of course.

For some the word travel invokes images of buzzy activities and cv enhancing “experiences” while for others it might be a couple of weeks in a container in the hope of finding a better life in a richer country. I applaud you for highlighting the grotesque inequalities.

You brought up a great point Robin. Travel is not even close to how it was in the past. While travelers like Ibn Batuta didn’t need visas to leve their shores, but leaving their own village on a camel/horse/foot was quite an adventure and a stepping into the unknown in a literal meaning…now an adventurer is one who doesn’t have fear of heights maybe 😀

I would love to visit Ireland someday, in this lifetime hopefully. And hopefully not in a container 😀 (might happen if thing in Egypt go to the extremes :P)

I know your sentiment coming from the Philippines holding a Philippine passport. If you read my previous posts about preparing for my round the world trip, you’ll see VISA, VISA, VISA came up every 2 sentences. I agree that not everyone in our countries can travel like everyone in North America and Europe. But you being born into money, you can do it. I did it with a little creativity. I didn’t pre-book everything and was able to travel around the world. I’m on my 11th month now.

Funny thing is I started my trip in Israel and Jordan. I wanted to go to Egypt too on the same trip but my visa never arrived. Haha.

I usually do the same, specially when I am not quite sure I’ll get the visa, like the first time I applied for a visa after graguating from college (That’s a big disadvantage when applying for visas), I didn’t want to lose all the money so I just booked without paying, this can be done through travel agencies, with a promise that as soon as I get my visa I’ll confirm the booking. Got the print out and applied to the visa with it 🙂

hope next time your Egyptian Visa would arrive on time 🙂 You should try again, never thought anyone is denied an Egyptian Visa!

As everyone stated above this is really eye opening. We get so caught up in our lives that we forget there are those that can not afford the vacations that some take. Even a “good deal” on a vacation can be unobtainable to most. I remember telling someone with a position that makes lower than mine how “cheap” my vacation was and I saw the look in his eyes like it was still too much for him to afford. From my perspective it was not much but through his it was way over his budget.

But I never knew how difficult it might be for other countries to obtain visas. I never thought about it actually but even if I did I would have assumed it was just as easy to get. It’s obviously something we take for granted because we can obtain our passports so easily.

The world isn’t as fair as it might seem…Many people in Egypt only dream of visiting another city inside Egypt, and that is still WAY above their budget…I still feel lucky when I think of those people, atleast I got the chance to leave my borders for a couple of times…

Thank you for sharing this post! As a dual citizen (US and Irish) I’m beyond well-aware that it’s essentially a given that I can travel to wherever I want. I first realized the struggle you describe when visiting Egypt myself. My tour guide explained to me how difficult it is just to travel somewhere for a few days and I couldn’t believe it. You write with such passion and I applaud you for sharing this post 🙂

I agree that there does seem to be some competition between bloggers/travellers in general on how little they can live on per day/week/month – I don’t do this on my site purely because I don’t think people could care less about how much I spend and also I don’t think it’s really helpful to others.

I think though that the ‘everyone can travel’ thing is sometimes less to do with having the actual money to travel and more to do with inspiring other people because if you encourage people to get out of their little bubble and genuinely want to see travel then they’ll find a way to get the money.

If you really want to do something there is always a way to make it happen.

Beverley, I am still looking for the way to make it happen to me 😀 I have caught the travel bug, and I am day dreaming about traveling the world 24/7, don’t know if it will ever happen the way I want it to, but I’m looking forward to it and trying my best to achieve it 🙂

This is one of the much better blog posts I’ve read in a long time. Congratulations on this very frank perspective. While we frequent travelers do realize that many countries do not enjoy the robust economy that we come from, I think we do forget exactly how hard it would be to live AND save on such a small salary. On top of that, the VISA issue is a big deal. Thank you for the reminder.

Great post, Mina! My husband and I are those dollar per day travel bloggers you refer to. As tight as we feel our budget is, I’ve known from the beginning just how unrealistic it would be for so many people in the countries we visit. The “North American/European privilege” is something I’ve been struggling with since I left home. Thanks for giving me a thoughtful post to read… it’ll be with me for a long time to come.

It is pleasing to see such an article written by an Egyptian which tells it as it is, without being emotive. Well done Mina. شكراً As a travelling Englishman, who incidentally speaks some Arabic and has spent time in Egypt, there is one aspect to the whole business of travel, which I have found that has not yet been mentioned. The British as the once greatest colonial power in the world taught bureaucracy and immigration to most of the world including America. These countries in their turn have turned this needless and sometimes mindless form filling into an art form. So to my mind it is the British who are to be blamed for it all. And if you think just getting a visa for entry is tough try sailing into French Polynesia, Australia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Yemen or Egypt. Not only do you have to pay the customs to come and search your boat they then take off all your food as it is dangerous to their agriculture and environment. Yet they do not confiscate the food on the luxury liners that arrive!!! Sadly it always seems to come back to money and if you have shed loads of it you get the royal treatment, but if you are on a shoe string budget…. Tough!!!!

Excellent post! Despite being American and of middle class background, I have always been a little annoyed with the “everyone can travel” posts because what you say is exactly true – no, not everyone can. While you focus on Egyptians, there are plenty of Americans living below what is considered poverty level here who are barely scraping by enough to put food on the table – sure, they may still be making more than the average person in Egypt, but for them travel is a pipe dream as well.

I do believe that travel is still a far away for even some Americans…When I mentioned that my friends make a lot of money in the States, I should have mentioned that they work 16 hours per day, no week ends or just 1 day weekend, they stay in the cheapest accommodation and usually they work in restaurants so food is on the house for 2 meals a day (average)

But if you’d live to American standards, and you have a family and kids to feed, what they make definitely wouldn’t be enough, or atleast wouldn’t be enough to make that family travel sometime

It’s the same in Egypt, many families have a far away dream of traveling withing Egypt, even to one of the cheap destinations in Egypt (Yes Egypt is cheap, but there are still even CHEAPER parts that travelers wouldn’t go to, and I wouldn’t recommend them to any traveler:D), but still that dream is so far away!

This was an extremely eye-opening and humbling post. I think I often take for granted how fortunate I am for holding a US passport. It’s so easy for us to say that “everyone can travel”, but no one had ever put it in perspective like you did. We wish you the best and admire your courage and perseverance.

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! for articulating this so well! Many in the travel blogosphere don’t necessarily recognize the massive amount of privilege they (and I) possess…even before they saved that starter chunk of change. Its refreshing to hear a “local” discuss the reality of the possibility of travel so openly. I hope this goes extra viral.

[…] I guarantee that you too will be surprised by the point of view shared in this enlightening post.No, Not Everyone Can Travel – A Bubble Burster3. Katie Going GlobalI chose this post because it’s a great example of how powerful a blog can […]

Great post. My partner is South Korean and, while it’s undoubtedly easier for him to travel than yourself, he still has a lot more limitations than me. He can’t just up and work in a different country, for example. If we went on a working holiday to say, Australia, I could get an office job and he wouldn’t be able to do much more than be a waiter or a barman, despite us both having the same level of education (university graduates).

Those of us born in western, English speaking countries do have a lot more privilege and we shouldn’t moan about it. Hopefully things will be more equal for everybody some day.

I found my way here from Matt’s blog (LandLopers) and being an Indian girl with an Indian passport, I empathize with your frustration. Over time though, I’ve realized that the fact that travelling is more challenging for our nationalities makes it that much more thrilling & fulfilling.

I did a month long trip around Europe last summer, and had to go through the exact same process for a Schengen visa, but you only have to be smarter about it. If you plan to stay a month, show flights times & bookings for a month that are fully refundable – and you’ve won yourself a month with no itinerary you must follow in Europe. Challenging, therefore more thrilling 🙂

Shivya, I do that everytime I have enough to travel, but still it is less spontaneous…though last time I was more adventurous in my interview and told the interviewer I don’t have any reservations, I;m going to walk el Camino de Santiago in Spain, which would take me more than a month, and I can’t get you reservations in each small village (and sometimes not even a real village).

The woman was very nice though, because she had walked el Camino herself a couple of years before that, so she gave me a 45 days visa 🙂 and that was the longest visa I ever got, and I spend it all there! never wasting 1 day of it!

As you said, our visa challenges makes travel more fun, once you actually do get the visa…it is not fun at all getting rejected 😀 been there, hope i don’t go back to that point again 😀

I couldn’t agree more about those posts telling you can travel too and just spend $23 a day. As a writer, I think you always have to keep in mind that no two people are alike in terms of finances, status and nationality. It’s particularly hard for me to believe these posts when the blogger throws in they are having this trip or that trip paid for by the Tourism Board. It also annoys me to no end how the U.S. would reject you and your family from coming here. We could benefit as a country a great deal more by allowing people to visit more easily. This is certainly something I take for granted as an American that most people will let me in their country pretty easily.

Yesterday I met two Americans by chance, they asked me if I ever visited or willing to visit the States…this was a questions I haven’t heard in a while, and my answer came out spontaneously “No”…

I would like to try again for the visa and travel to the States, it’s the size of Europe! there are several amazing things I want to see there, besides new york and disney land 😀 but I think I’m just afraid of getting rejected again…Hope I’ll have more luck next time 😀

PS my sister did get the visa a couple of months ago, when she applied with her fiance and said they’d go spend their honey moon there… 😛 (I believe when we got rejected, we were better ‘candidates’ as we were still students, so we had stronger reasons to come back to Egypt!)

I was happy to come across this post: very good points. I am Portuguese traveling full time for the last 7 months with my boyfriend who is from India. Traveling as a couple with different nationalities has proven that not everyone is as privileged and has as many oportunities as others. VISAS are a huge thing… We an apply and eventually get visas to go to places but, as you mentioned, you have to plan a lot, work out your dates and itineraries, much more than if you got vista on arrival.
Also, It’s true that most travel bloggers (at least that most well known ones on the web) offer a very unilateral prespective on things. That’s who they are, no problem, of course… What irritates me actually is the way most guides (particularly Lonely Planet) have such a western way of going about traveling and exploring a certain destination… Offers such poor biased prespectives on stuff… On forums like Thorn Tree from LP, people even write things like “back home…” without specificity where they are from… Almost as if one was automatically supposed to assume that they are from the USA or at the most another western country.
Really happy to have come across your blog… Be sure I’ll be reading more. Always great to follow a blog writen by someone from a different background… For a change! 😉

To be honest I have never tried read travel guides, I usually just use wikitravel to get an idea of what to do/see and plan a rough itinerary of where i’ll go each day, and then figure out when I’m there how it actually goes. But I can imagine that they would be written with a unilateral or a biased point of view of things as well…

And I think I should visit some of these forums and start saying sentences starting with “Back Home” as well…and see how the response will be like 😀 should be fun 😉 😀

As someone who has worked for many years with immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees, and especially people from the Roma community, I fully endorse your comments on travel difficulties for those who are not privileged to have a European/American/Australian passport.

I have made a conscious choice to live on €10 or less per week for my food and day to day living expenses after rent and bills are paid in order to fund my travel plans. But I know that should an emergency arise, I would be able to access funds to deal with it.

Whilst I can see the limitations of living on such a low budget in a European country, it is my personal choice. Hpwever, it is not a choice for people in most of the world. It is a fact of life over which they have no control.

I am extremely aware of the privilege that my nationality has conferred on me, and actively make every possible effort to try to share what benefits I can with people who do not have such opportunities as I have had.

Thank you for bringing this issue to the attention of travellers. It is something which so many people never think about. We live in an extremely unfair and unequal world. I would hope that those of us with the privilege of access to travel opportunities, will return to their home countries with a more open mind towards their obligations to redress the balance in whatever ways they can. This may be by fostering friendships made whilst travelling, to enable others to access travel opportunities to our home countries, or by making conscious choices as to how we actually spend money, actively seeking out Fair Trade products and avoiding being sucked into a consumerist culture.

Your article will be greatly enlightening to many people and I would like to thank you for writing it.

Very well put – I started travelling as an exchange student in 1973 and have lived, studied and worked in several countries. It seems to me that the more our world globalizes the more restricted becomes the free movement of people. Travelling in those days was much, much easier than it is now. For example, I am a South African, South Africa is a member of the Commonwealth, my grandfather was born in London, my niece and family are British citizens, but for me to get a visa for the UK just to visit them is a process almost not worth having to go through!

I know what you mean, I have family in Australia, Canada and the States and I am less than interested to go through all the fuss of the visa to visit them…I always tell them you come visit Egypt, so much easier for a family gathering 😀

Very interesting article. Yes when people say “everyone” can travel what’s really implied is everyone from Western Europe, North America, Australia etc.

You can travel though, it’s just much much harder for you. If you really want it, you can. For example you can travel in Europe on $5/day if you want. Of course, you will be eating dry bread and sleeping in a tent and possibly avoiding major cities….and doing a lot of cycling…

I hear you on the visa issues and the stupid paperwork, though. I can’t help you much with that. My only suggestion would be to book reservations at hotels that are veru definately 100% refundable within a certain time, borrow some money from a credit card company or family, and then once you have arrived in the Europe go on the internet and cancel them all.

The other thing might be to travel within Africa itself. I bet you could travel down to East Africa overload and have an interesting trip. And it would be a lot cheaper. Not sure how they feel about visas.

About traveling in Africa, I do get visa on arrival in most East African nations, I dream about doing an overland Cape Town back to Alexandria over land trip. Tried budgetting it and thought it would cost at least a good 5k, so thought I’d leave it till later 😀 But it is the TOP of my bucket list to do this trip…

I also get so annoyed with all of the “I’m not lucky, I worked hard” posts out there. You ARE lucky! You are. What’s so bad about admitting that? Yeah, you worked hard too, but you’re lucky.

I’m planning a trip now with my Colombian boyfriend, and without even talking about money, the visas are a nightmare. We’re avoiding the US and Europe completely, but for most visas you have to apply from a country you’re a resident of, and they all have time restrictions where you can’t apply more than 1 month or 3 months before you plan to enter the country. So taking a trip of a few months requires a LOT of planning in advance, where to go, where to apply for each visa from, all the visa processing times, etc.

I had always taken for granted my American passport and being able to decide to go to a different country whenever I wanted to. That’s not an option for the majority of the world. I’m incredibly lucky. And I should make sure I remember that.

I hear you, specially on the where to apply from issue, I’m supposed to be traveling between Indonesia and Thailand in a few months (hopefully) and I still can’t work out if I can apply from the Indonesian visa from Thailand or not, even the embassy in Egypt didn’t give me a definitive answer :S

Goodluck on your trip 🙂

PS it is usually WAY MORE fun that way, after you’re actually on the trip and after all of that planning and sleepless nights 😉

Hello Mina 🙂 that’s a great article , You are so right!
I recently started reading about traveling and every single word you wrote here is just so real and I’ve seen it happens to a lot of my friends especially the part about the US visa and the reason is always confidential even with all the right papers..
I wish I could be one of the ones that can pack a back and go anywhere but as u say, someday i’ll be there 🙂

Moyra thanks for your comment! You know exactly how things go 😀 I’m sure you’ve been into the conversation with some of your friends before that went to interviews and either got accepted or rejected :d it’s always a great story to tell 😀 and usually a short one with so many unanswered questions 😀

Having spent all of today reading about how to acquire a Russian visa for myself on a UK Passport but also one for my Italian partner on an Italian passport, the contrasts in ease between them is ridiculous & the Italian passport being inside the EU makes it still quite easy in comparison to everything I’ve read her.

I know there isn’t much we can do personally to help but if ever we can help people whilst we travel or through the site then don’t anyone hesitate to get in contact.

[…] my thinking.The first was a blog post I highlighted in my picks of the week by Mina Sameh entitled “No, Not Everyone Can Travel – A Bubble Burster” in which he explains the difficulty involved with traveling the world from a perspective outside of […]

I’ll call you on your BS. Everyone can travel if they want to. I don’t care how much you are making or what is your citizenship. There is always a way to travel and experience the world.

You are really saying that not everyone can travel like some travel bloggers do. I can agree with that assessment but to say that not everyone can travel is pure BS.

Travel Expenses? Bikes are cheap around the world and so are bike parts. Tent camping is cheap and while not the best everywhere in the world, it’s passable. Food? Eat cheap local food, share your tales with people over a dinner. Most people are hospitable around the world and will share a meal with someone just to hear what life is like in their home country.

Income? Anyone, with a little work, can make money online. No money for a fancy laptop? I use a $10 AlphaSmart for my writing and connect it to a cheap $70 Chinese Android tablet. But online income aint the only thing, you can always pick up under the table income. This used to be the case years ago before the internet. The beautiful thing about coming from a third world country is that pretty much anywhere you go, you can make as much doing side jobs as you could back home.

Think everyone can’t travel? Check out the Brazilian movie The Middle of the World.

Jack, next time you cross the ocean by bike – let us all know, I’m sure they’ll give you a Guinness record for it.

Now, if you finished reading you would know that money is just one side of the coin. Getting a visa is a whole different issue. You can have $10-20K in your account but if you are young, single, and belong to a certain nationality, you can wave good buy to your travel dreams.

Sorry, buddy, but these are not tales or BS, this is a reality for many. And btw, The Middle of the World is about IN-COUNTRY traveling, which is NOT what Mina was talking about.

Thanks for this great post. It’s important to remember that being able to travel is a privilege and not everyone has the financial means or easy access to go to other countries.
I went on a trip around the world and in most places I could get a visa on arrival or with relatively little paperwork, thank goodness. The one exception was Sudan. I was in Khartoum on a four hour layover and was not allowed to even leave the plane because at the time Sudan was not issuing visas to Canadian citizens.
And I know Canada can also be unreasonable about citizens of other countries visiting their relatives here, unfortunately.

I’m Australian, and with that I get the privilege of earning a minimum wage above $7 an hour, and I get the freedoms that are involved with having an Australian passport.

Those are the two biggest things that weighed down on my conscience when I travelled through Egypt for a month in February. Because of the revolution and lack of tourism, I spent a lot of time with my tour guides and hotel staff, because there was no one else around to interact with. One guy was telling me how he survives off only $50 a month as a hotel receptionist. So now he is studying to be a tour guide because that’s where the money is in Egypt.

Even more-so in January I was in Morocco, and there I CouchSurfed with a guy who was studying languages. He lived in a poorer neighbourhood, and often didn’t make it to class to study because the buses (and classrooms) were overcrowded with students (he showed me photos). He spent over a year trying to get a visa to leave Morocco and move to PNG with a family friend (who offered to sponsor him), but was denied. Now he feels like there is no hope left besides marrying a foreign woman.

It saddens me. But none of us can help the country we were born in.

I am one of those bloggers saying “live the life you want, a life of eager existence!”, and “you can afford to travel now”.. but my blog is focused on friends-and-family in Australia who complain that they’ll never be able to travel.

But I also agree with Jack somewhat, it’s been proven by a few that you don’t need to be rich to travel. People have travelled with next-to-nothing. Perhaps locally, overland, and into neighbouring countries that share your border though. But no one said “travel” had to be via aeroplane.

Regardless of my opinions, thank you for reminding us that not everyone was born into privilege. We should be grateful for what we have.

It is really sad the story about your Moroccan friend, but sadly this is the case with millions of people that live in similar countries. Some don’t even have the dream to travel but they have a hard time getting enough money to feed their kids…

You don’t need to be rich according to Western standards to afford traveling, yes that is true, but try getting paid $50 per month, or even be a lucky Egyptian like me and get paid $400-$500 per month, spend on your food and transportation…etc. and see how much of that can you save afterwards, and how many working years on minimal expensiture you will need to save up 4-5k to be able to make a long term trip for example…

Wow, thank you for writing this–it’s very eye-opening. My husband and I were just complaining about the complicated process of getting a Chinese visa (we’re American’s)…but now I see how good we have it. I’m sorry you’ve encountered so many troubles trying to visit the U.S., and I thank you giving me some perspective. I hope someday you can make it to visit your uncle!

Hi Mina, thanks a lot for writing this post! I think I would have never had the guts to do that… even though have been having similar thoughts for a long while now.

Travelling is still a luxury! And luxury not in the sense of costing a lot of money, but a luxury thing to even think about, if all you do in your day-to-day life is fighting for survival (as majority of people around the world do). There are always ways to do things, but this is all a question of how easy / difficult it is to achieve it and what are your priorities in life… I was very surprised to see some of the very harsh comments above (especially the one from Jack!!) and hope that only minority really think like this.

I come from Russia and many of the issues you are mentioning sound very familiar to me as well. Now I am living in Germany and travelling in Europe became much easier, however, I still remember those horrible days when I had to provide accommodation confirmation for each day of my stay and getting visa exactly from the day of arrival to the day of departure… I still need to do this for many other countries in the world I need to travel to, but life got much much easier.

I was very happy to come across your blog as I think you are adding the missing perspective to the world of travel blogging – will be following you going forward 🙂

I really hope more people are more understanding! And yes, we can put it as you said, it is a luxury to even think about having a weekend in a neighboring town in their own country! That is what many people fail to understand! That life to the vast majority of the population on this earth isn’t as easy as it is to them. To many people even thinking about spending money on a trip (even by biking or even a 1 day trip to the beach) would make them feel guilty because they only make enough money daily to barely put food on the table!

Hi Mina, thanks for voicing this issue! I am Russian and this is EXACTLY my experience.

As a Russian, I too have to have a visa to pretty much every country in the world. And the process is the same: get a bunch of papers proving that you have ties at home, pay a hefty visa fee, and wait for the result, praying that it’s positive… If you are lucky – they won’t need an interview (especially for US).
This is such a diminishing process, pisses me off every time!

I live in Canada now, but this doesn’t change anything since I don’t have a Canadian passport. People in the Western world have no clue about the unfairness that we have to deal with. So I’m glad you did this post!

Wow great post! I’ve always felt so lucky to have travelled in the way that I have. I’m so grateful every day as I know that the majority of the reason for it is luck by birthright. The rest of it is hard work.

The only reason I’ve been able to travel like I have is because of my nationality I’ve been able to live and work in other countries, and earn good money.

We offer advice and tips on our blog on how to save money to travel as I know a vast majority of my readers are like me and are lucky by birth.

But, I’m always very aware that travel, like so many Westerners do, is not an option for the majority of people in the world. That’s why I am so so surprised by so many comments from people here who have said you have opened their eyes up. My thoughts are, “Why haven’t your eyes been open to this fact whilst travelling?”

I wrote about this topic somewhat recently on the blog and how it took me a long time to deal with the idea that so many people in the world have nothing purely as a result of where they were born. One thing that always stood with me was that I never encountered anyone who had so much less than me, begrudge me for it. They were always so happy to have met me and always acted in a way that they wanted me to live that luck to the fullest, as they knew how much they wanted the same.

We lived in Bangkok for six months and mostly spent time with our beautiful Thai friends. They would love to hear our travel stories and commented on how lucky we were. I always felt uncomfortable because I knew that option would never be there for them and I wanted it to and I never knew how to make it a realty for them. I just knew that I had to be so grateful for the place where I was born and to make the most of it. We would go to the movies every Friday with our friends because as Jintina would say, “I travel the world through the movies.”

I hope that through our blog we can help those who can’t travel, travel through us and I hope that we can inspire anyone around the world to find ways within their own means to follow their heart and live their dreams and to be happy.
Thank you for sharing with us about your beautiful country and helping to break down those barriers.

Caz thanks a lot for your comment! I read the post you wrote and it is so true and I really wish that most people would think “of the other world” the way you do!

I’ve been traveling through travel blogs for almost two years now 😀 So thanks to you and the other bloggers I know a lot! And my bucket list became endless hehe 😀 I’ll work on traveling though, if the “big countries” won’t accept then I’ll just travel to the rest of the world…the world doesn’t end in USA 😛

In the US I met people from South America working in a Pennsylvania Diner. They lived together in a small appartment, made the 5 dollars an hour they saved for their family.

An au-pair from Hungary, didn’t go out of the house for almost a year. No sight-seeing. Just taking care of kids and cleaning the house from the morning to the evening. Saved 10.000 dollars to buy an appartment in her home country so she could live a life as a teacher and really concentrate on that.

Me, I did see sights, did get to know the Americans, did work 60 hours a week in a diner, did worry about paying rent, car insurance, health care (well that is actually number 1 worry, went to the doctor once for a stomach ache and they charge 60 dollars for 15 minutes).
Also worked as an au-pair, asked for more money than my Hungarian co worker before me. Got it. Since is still a great value to make more than you spend.
Still health-insurance…just don’t get you stomach upset.!

Well, great value was I met Americans of all walks of life. One of my friends didn’t have health insurance, since she was making about 7 dollars an hour. She was lucky to know that her employer would treat her only charging the “real costs”. Cancer is a big deal, a terrible disease, so yes, you worry.

Coming from Western Europe to the US, also include cavity searches, pocket searches, searches of you hair-do and nowadays also fingerprints. Not mention the stare downs, and look ups.

I am dreaming of a lot things still. But they are not all possible. They always include money, time or borders of any kind.
Everybody experiences borders. Somehow.

Many people go work under the table in the USA and make loads of money! I always wonder how Americans find it hard to save up some money…yes if you’re living there full time you would spend more than a guy who’s going for a couple of months, but still if an illegal worker can save 10,000 then an American can atleast save half that amount?

And I hear you, all my plans and dreams also include money and border crossing! They are always the thing that disturbs my day dreams!

I appreciate you writing this post and I believe it is important for us Americans to not take for granted our ease of travel. I sincerely hope you get to travel to the US very soon and to whatever other countries you desire. Thank you for giving us perspective.

Thanks for a blunt kick back into reality. You are right in every account (obviously), and I hope that someday things change and you will get the opportunity you want. I think it is important for us travelers to be appreciative of the opportunities we have been given, and not flaunt them. Thanks for the reminder!

Thanks for stating your opinion here. I find the responses, and your replies to them, very informative! It is causing me to rethink how we approach our travel blog.

Generally our readers are American, and like many others here we attempt to persuade them to travel. We believe that travel is great for overcoming prejudice and stereotypes. But now it seems rather silly that we have to spend so much time convincing people to do things that many other people in the world only dream of. Americans tend to be heavily in debt, and we encourage them to pay it all off. Most people in the world don’t even have the choice to pay for things on credit. Americans have large homes which are the major part of their debt. Most people in the world struggle to have basic shelter and clean water. Americans have large incomes, but between their debt payments and extravagant lifestyles they save almost nothing back. Most people in the world struggle to pay for necessities.

We’re writing a book about our travels and it will have a section for Americans on how to do all of these things, but your post will probably cause me to revise things a bit. You’ve given me much to think about.

I agree that you should try and convince Americans to travel…They are lucky enough with their passports and high paying jobs, if they don’t spend the money they don’t have already they will be saving up in no time and will have more than enough to start living their travel dream! But I know that many won’t understand this privilege that they got by chance!

I worked really hard to be able to leave the United States and live in Thailand, where the cost of living is several factors lower, and I’m proud that I managed to get up and go, yet very aware that the price differential is what makes this sustainable. Clearly, the situation cannot be reversed. It’s not a universal trope!

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[…] most of the advice in this post relies on you having a laptop or at the minimum access to one. As Mina points out, there are other obstacles to travel (e.g. visas) for many around the world and certainly a base […]

that’s agreat post BRo ,i’m an algerian and I have the same problem,,but what we can do? to solve this,, we born with Fetters ,i’ve tried everything !always get the same response :visa rejected (confidential reasons like u said) well i i definitely can’t hold on much longer in this situation.
sometimes i think that itsn’t metter of luck BUT :we are just Cursed cuz We’re born without any ability or power to any thing special,Just like we’re born in a prison!
well good look my friend — حظا سعيداا يا اخي

Thanks Zakarya, I know how you feel exactly, being rejected for a couple of visas myself. But there are always other places to travel to if you wish to travel. And according to people that eventually do get accepted to the visas, they always say keep on trying again and you will get lucky in one of the interviews. To be honest, I couldn’t do it for too long, but will definitely try again!

Ya Mina, love your post. Im in the USA, have family in Egypt, and it makes me so angry that I can easily visit Egypt with my passport, but they must prove their intent and pay alot of money for a visa interview and STILL BE DENIED the chance to visit me!!! Its ridiculous and so unfair for Egyptians that they have almost no chance to get a tourist visa. Even with my invitation letters and proof of income and passport, the immigration officers deny them. Westerners do not understand this horrible feeling, cuz with their passport the world is at their fingertips. This is such unfair treatment for citizens of a country that welcomes the world to their country. God Bless the people of Masr and I pray one day the USA will stop refusing good people and making it hard for them to travel and let my family visit my home in the USA. Until then, I will keep coming to Cairo, because I love Om Dunya, and Egypt never refused me and there is no place like it in this world.

During my travels I also met another Egyptian who’s been trying to visit his brother in Australia but is getting denied the visa, although he already took the visa twice before and did not over stay or do anything illegal there!

Add to that how we are not even offered the chances of work visa like Europe and USA to Australia, so residents of poorer countries can’t actually go and make some money to support their families while residents of richer countries can go and make some easy money to travel around for a few years!
Life is unfair I guess 😀 Hope it will become better someday 🙂

Your post is so wonderfully eyeopening, thank you Mina! It is such a shame that more than half the world do not have the freedom to travel like the Western world does. It really saddens me to hear it first-hand. I sincerely hope that you get to see the places you desire and I hope that some day the travel barriers dissolve.

[…] })(); I first “met” Mina Mahrous several months ago when he wrote an incredibly eye-opening post on his blog. As an Egyptian, he rightly took issue with how we travel bloggers tend to say anybody […]

Hi Mina
I really appreciate your post. I am an Indian with a post graduate business degree and earning very well by Indian standards (about 20000 USD which takes me to the top 2% bracket in my country). My passion is traveling and I aspire to go on long term travels. To plan for this I have been going through hundreds of blogs which have not been able to help me as they are all from the western perspective. They all talk about teaching jobs and the likes but I wonder that whether even a university educated Indian will even be considered for the basic job of teaching English.
Especially worth considering is the restrictions on visa which I got to know about only recently. However I guess if the passion is strong enough we shall also find our way around the world one way or the other.
All the best 🙂

Hello K, I know exactly what you mean. You might find some English teaching jobs in South East Asia, but they won’t be the extremely-well-paying-international-schools kind of jobs, as those only hire native speakers. And not even any native speaker, I know abother blogger who is of Chinese origins but is an American, born and raised there, she got refused to work as a teacher in China, as she looks Chinese…So you get the idea of what they are looking for…

Visa restrictions are the worst part. Though half of the problem is solved if you have a strong bank account when applying, but it is the fact that you have to apply for each and every country before visiting, and all this “well planning” before hand which takes out half of the beauty of traveling!

However, if it is your passion then as you say, you will find a way! Good luck to all of us in solving this dilemma 🙂

Hi Mina!
This is probably the best and most realistic blog that I’ve come across with in terms of traveling because I can pretty much relate with your sentiments. The major part of it has something to do with the dilemma that both of us are having which is about securing a visa to enter other countries. I am from and in the Philippines and traveling is very hard and difficult not only because I have to secure a visa but also because the Philippines is an archipelago and is separated from continental Asia. This makes traveling even more expensive, well at least from me who is a third world citizen. Although I am very proud of where I came from, I sometimes find the Philippines as more of a geographical inconvenience than a tropical paradise. hahaha Anyway, inasmuch as I would like to believe that everyone should be equally treated, the ‘visa system’ makes me think otherwise. Securing a visa alone is a clear manifestation that we don’t live in a fair world. How could a 23 year-old US citizen be allowed to travel to Europe but a 23 year-old guy in the Philippines denied of the same privilege? I have always wished and prayed that everyone gets to travel freely but it appears traveling is only a privilege available to a few, mostly to first world citizens.

Enough of the rantings. hahaha anyway…

I simply love your blog because it is heart-felt and it reflects most of the sentiments of the people from Asia and Africa which Westeners and Europeans failed to consider and missed quite a lot when they compose their blog posts. When I read your blog, it feels like I am part of the story because you allow me to fill your shoes. You tell a story in the point of view of a person who has a limited access to the world. You represent majority of the Asians and Africans in your blog posts and that amkes you, for me, one of the best bloggers on earth! Keep us all inspired and motivated! Let’s just hope things will turn out better in the future.

PS: The funny thing is Egyptians are required to secure Filipino visa and Filipinos are required to have Egyptian visa. What a strange world it is, indeed!

Hi Jasper! Your comment brought such a huge smile to my face! Thank you a lot for what you said! And I totally agree that the world is an unfair place, and your luck of being born in a certain country decides most of your future, according to the position of that country in the hierarchy of countries. 🙂 It is sad but true. Hopefully all things will turn out to the better, and one day all humans will be equal in their rights to travel (and many other missing rights)

[…] Very important thing to read and keep in mind. It’s too easy to get sucked into travel blogs and daydreaming and not realize just how lucky you are to even have the option. No, Not Everyone Can Travel – A Bubble Burster […]

I totally agreed with your point of view. I have been thinking of the same thing previously and this is what I figured out.

On dollar to dollar basis, a waiter in Germany earning Euro 1,200 per month can afford to fly to Malaysia whereas a waiter in Malaysia earning RM 1,200 per month, will find it hard even to fly locally.

See, the German guy, with 1,200 Euros, he paid for rental, car mortgage etc and might still have a balance of 600 Euros. With the 600 Euros, coupled with the conversion rate of RM 4 to a Euro, he will have RM 2,400 if he come to Malaysia with the 600 Euros, which is the salary of a fresh graduate lawyers!

While a waiter in Malaysia, minus the car mortgage, rental etc, he might have a balance of RM 300, which is not even Euro 100, so where can he travels to?

So, I totally got your point. Like me, previously I was a practicing lawyer earning RM 3,500 per month i.e. USD 1,100 per month, and is a middle class in Malaysia. With that earnings, I still managed to travel across South East Asia, but to go to Europe or the USA and live the traveller’s dream? It is going to be hard! 🙂Khai recently posted…Selamat Hari Raya Aidiladha / Eid-Al-Adha Mubarak

Khai, I agree with you, when I lived in Indonesia as an intern I was being paid 250 dollars per month, and that was actually enough for food and going out on the weekends too! While the real teachers that worked full time got paid an average of only 400 dollars! Which is perfect for Indonesia, but can any of them even think of saving up enough to go to Europe? It is doable, but really hard! I had an Indonesian friend who saved up enough to spend 3 months in Europe (Eastern Europe to be specific) but he did it, and he also borrowed a lot of money, and had free accommodation in Europe at his friends’ houses 😀

Right now I am in the UK and when I try to compare prices I go crazy! A bottle of coke is 1.5 pounds, that’s more than 15 Egyptian pounds?? That is 5 coke bottles where I come from!! But it is affordable if you work here and get paid with British rates…

The world is complicated and I can only hope that it will get better 🙂 Hope you get to fulfill your travel dreams soon 🙂

I’ve always been bothered by this. The world is definitely not a place that can be easily explored. Honestly, I wish they would do away with visas and let people travel where they wish. I think the world would be a bit more fun that way.

Wow, I had absolutely no idea about any of this. It really opens your eyes to your surroundings and makes you take notice of the freedoms that we sometimes may take advantage of. Thank you so much for sharing!Jeska recently posted…27 Things Only People From Hawai’i Will Understand

I’m going to sound like a broken record player here but thank you so much for writing this post! It certainly puts things into perspective for me (and many others I’m sure!) and serves as a timely reminder to never take things for granted. Being Singaporean, it’s been fairly easy for me to travel to various countries without a hitch, and knowing that not everyone has the freedom and privilege to do so is saddening and frustrating at the same time. Wish there’s more to be done about this, but nonetheless, here’s wishing you a lifetime of travels and adventures ahead!

Hi Leona, it is never boring to here that comment 🙂 It actually makes me happy to know someone new has read that post and understood got a little perspective about other countries. For you it might even be more, as your neighbor country won’t have the same privileges as you! Make sure you use that privilege you have to its max and spread a good message around the world 😉

[…] No, Not Everyone Can Travel on Someday I’ll Be There: We have several articles here on Art of Backpacking about how anyone can travel but the reality is not everyone actually can. It helps put things into perspective. […]

[…] travel blogging world has been paying a lot of attention recently to a post called No, Not Everyone Can Travel – A Bubble Burster, from Mina Mahrous’s blog “Someday I’ll Be There”. Mina reminds us that […]

I am an Indonesian, I also think for us is rather difficult traveling between countries border. Since our passport only can get us entering around 50+ countries with free visa. Well, but I still trying to visit as many as possible 🙂 nice post there!Fahmi recently posted…Kaitenzushi Yang Bikin Saya Happy!

[…] travel blogging world has been paying a lot of attention recently to a post called No, Not Everyone Can Travel – A Bubble Burster, from Mina Mahrous’s blog “Someday I’ll Be There”. Mina reminds us that […]

[…] privileges beyond the wildest dreams of the majority of the planet's populous. Read this passage – No, Not Everyone Can Travel – A Bubble Burster – from an educated and articulate middle-class Egyptian who's on the other side of the equation. […]

I just came across this post and I am so happy to find another travel blogger who has the same sentiments! I am from the Philippines and it is so stressful to apply for visas, and even after all the hard work we put into the application, it is still not a guarantee that the visa will be granted. 🙁

I am Egyptian too bro!You cant imagine how much I loved and respected your blog and this post especially…been looking forward so long for an egyptian who shares the same dreams and (unfortunately) facing the same frustrations..I always dream about travelling the world and writing books and stories about my travels..like Anis Mansour 😀
Now you got me hooked to your blog because it is real for me 😀

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Who is this?

I'm Mina Mahrous, an Egyptian guy in the early 20s that has a dream of traveling the world, instead of becoming a boring pharmacist. I'm always writing travel tales from a different (Egyptian) point of view, and general travel advice and travel mishaps!